


Five flights

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Who Needs a Plot Anyway, and excessive sappiness, lots of sleepy people on these planes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:51:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: Four journeys Peggy and Daniel made alone, and one they made together.





	

1\. The first time Peggy jumps out of a plane, she is twenty years old and thousands of feet above the Pennine Alps. It is a moonless night, and she strains her eyes to see the snow on the mountains below her. The wind roars in her ears; the pilot shouts something she cannot hear, but she knows it is almost time. There is no going back now. With one hand, she fingers the straps of the parachute on her back, and with the other hand she steadies herself against the wall of the plane, fighting the wave of nausea and fear that threatens to overwhelm her. She closes her eyes and tells herself to trust her training.

Trust that her parachute will not fail; trust that it will not send her smashing into the side of a cliff; trust that it will not lead her to drift into a lake where she might drown, tangled up in fabric and rope. Trust that she will land safely; that she will not lose her way as she treks out of the mountains into hostile territory; that her contact will still be waiting for her; that she will complete the mission. Trust that she will have the fortitude to do all these things and then do it all over again, because this is just the first mission and the war is far from over. Trust herself.

She thinks of her parents sitting at the kitchen table, anxiously awaiting her next letter; she thinks of the dust settling on the diamond ring on top of her dresser; she thinks of a headstone in a cemetery in Hampstead over an empty grave. _You are meant to fight_.

She opens her eyes and jumps.

* * *

2\. Daniel doesn’t remember much of the long plane ride back to New York; doesn’t see the countryside below him pockmarked with scars left behind by the bombs, the ash floating in the air as cities crumble and burn, the wreckage of submarines and ships and pieces of planes sinking down to the bottom of the ocean. Somewhere through the haze of morphine he knows his leg is gone and he’s going home. Later he’ll have time to think about what all of it means, but for now he focuses on the light streaming through the windows, casting a rosy glow on the opposite wall. It reminds him of the stained glass windows of a church, and something about it helps him drift to sleep, the best he’s had in ages.

He dreams as the plane carries him home, following the sunrise west. In his dream, he sees his mother the way he remembered her best, dark hair done up carefully in curls, standing five feet tall and filling the room with her presence. She's been gone for more than a decade now. She takes his hand and tells him, It's okay to be afraid, the cost is high and you cannot see what lies ahead of you as I can. But love is waiting for you and the future is beautiful, and you, my son, you are beautiful and whole and more than anything I could have wished for. And I am with you, even in the darkness, even when there seems to be no way out. I am with you.

* * *

3\. Agent Thompson falls asleep somewhere over Poland, head tilted against the window, hair lying flat across his forehead. Sleep drains the tension from his jaw, but the bags under his eyes are still there. Peggy watches the slow rise and fall of his chest for a little while, and then gazes out the window at the clouds below. Like him, she has war stories of her own that she has never spoken of; she has memories that sometimes come flooding back to her at the smallest provocation. She might be crossing the street, or standing in front of the stove making tea, or curling her hair, and suddenly her hands start shaking and her breathing goes shallow and she goes back for a split second to July 1941, to June 1944, to May 1945. Sometimes Peggy can remember where she is and pull herself out of it quickly, but sometimes not. So even though it doesn’t excuse his behavior she can understand why Jack Thompson froze in the middle of a firefight, and how he’s remained in a state of self-paralysis in other parts of his life. She too made difficult, ugly choices during the war; she too has had her share of questioning and guilt.

She looks around at her other dozing companions, her Commandos, and she wonders about the invisible weight they carry with them. And her colleagues at the SSR, the ones who snicker at her openly, the ones who ignore and dismiss her unless she has their lunch, the small number who have treated her with something closer to respect, though not without qualifications—Agent Sousa briefly comes to mind, _can’t find my leg anywhere_ —what of them? How do you carry that weight; what can you do when your own memories are the enemy? She doesn’t know the answer.

The plane begins its descent, dropping down through the clouds. The world below disappears into the fog. She falls and falls.

* * *

4\. The takeoff is rocky, but once they’re in the air Daniel pulls back the curtain and looks down on the familiar landmarks he’s leaving behind. The Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, sure—but also the things he can’t see from this vantage point, like the church his parents were married in, and the Horowitz’s newsstand where he’s picked up the morning paper for years, and his father’s deli. _It’s not for forever_ , he tells himself, and he would have been crazy to pass up a promotion like this, but there’s a kind of finality to it anyway.

The night before, he had gone to bed early and listened to his father pace around the kitchen for hours, the way he had done when Daniel had left for war five years earlier. Back and forth, back and forth, circling around the kitchen table. Daniel picked up the habit from him long ago and even now, even with the leg, he’ll find himself pacing without thinking about it.

He left his father standing alone on the runway, and Daniel tries not to think of him taking the subway back to an empty apartment. He’ll call him once he arrives in Los Angeles. He pictures his bare desk at the SSR, Thompson sitting in Dooley’s office, Peggy with a thick stack of reports in front of her. _Another time, all right?_ And that was that. He forces himself to turn his attention to all the things he has to do once he arrives: go to the office and meet the new staff, schedule interviews, plan meetings, buy a car, move into his new place, and…

Everything is waiting for him. A second chance. A fresh start. But for now he’s passing over the crest of the Rockies, dusted in snow; now he’s over dry desert mountain ranges; and at last, there’s the valley below and a city that stretches out for as far as the eye can see. It’s a beautiful country.

* * *

5\. On the final leg of the trip, Peggy’s head droops down onto Daniel’s shoulder, and he squeezes her hand. He can’t believe over a year has passed since Peggy came to Los Angeles for the Isodyne case—and stayed. And what a year it’s been; a whirlwind of investigations and conspiracies and secrets, with no sign of letting up anytime soon. It was hard enough to find a week during the holidays to slip away to visit his father. At any rate, the trip will be as much about work as pleasure, with various meetings at the New York SSR office and a few more in D.C. For Peggy, this will also be the first time she meets Daniel’s father, and he has a feeling they’ll hit it off right away.

Peggy shifts in her seat and opens her eyes, a lazy smile on her lips. “Have a good nap?” he asks her as she stretches.

“Mm hmm,” she yawns, shivering and pulling her coat around her tighter. It’s winter everywhere except for Los Angeles. Even though they dressed warmly for the flight, it’s not enough. “Oh no, darling, you don’t have to do that,” she protests as he starts taking off his coat.

He drapes it over her. “Just don’t want you to be sniffling and sneezing over Christmas dinner. You’re a terrible patient anyway.”

“And you aren’t?” she asks, but she still accepts the coat.

“Not as bad as you, Carter.” She rolls her eyes at that but doesn’t disagree.

At some point, he falls asleep and doesn’t wake up until the plane begins its descent into LaGuardia. As he drifts back to consciousness, he realizes the knitted blanket from their luggage is draped over him. Peggy is still wearing his coat and dozing at his side, but at some point she must have gotten up and taken it out so he wouldn’t get cold. He smiles and rubs his thumb in circles in her palm, trying to warm up her hands. What she doesn’t know about this visit to New York is that he’s planning to ask his father for his mother’s ring. It’s nothing flashy, just a single square-cut diamond set in a gold band, but he hopes she’ll like it. He hopes she’ll say yes.

So they land in LaGuardia in a snowstorm, stepping off the tarmac hand in hand, hearts full, dreams defying gravity.


End file.
